(1) Once the term "feminist" denoted members of a specific faction within Women's Liberation. To academics, however, it merely means "people who are pro-woman." Since they use the word this way, so shall we-- under protest.return to "Academic Feminists..."
(2) We are not saying academic feminists always sell out. Our point is that the structural pressures on academics do discourage anything else. Where exceptions occur, structural variables rather than superb souls must be used to explain them. Similarly, whoever wishes to avoid this problem, the others we discuss, and the ones we don't--cannot depend for protection exclusively on her lovely motives. Ladies, dear ladies, you can't will yourselves immune. The road is paved with good intentions.return to "Academic Feminists..."
(3) In fact, academics seem to expect movement gratitude for finally climbing on board. Thus they occasionally use movement publications to solicit volunteer subjects for their research projects. Evidently they believe their unpaid subjects receive vicarious recompense of knowing they helped Dr. So-and-So get her fourth book published. Sisterhood is it's own reward-- for the sisters on the bottom.return to "Academic Feminists..."
(4) Another about- face is worth mentioning here. While once academic feminists avoided the area of marriage and family as a traditional "women's field," today they are overrunning it.return to "Academic Feminists..."
(5) Nor, as we argued earlier, is it communication with the People they crave. They frequently claim that is their goal. But they have no evidence to assume, as they always do, that the people will be alienated by any version of feminism but theirs. After all, someone buys all that Women's Liberation literature; we joined the movement. It says enough to enough people to have become a national issue. Somebody out there does care. Why assume the masses are unsympathetic? Or that we must approach them with pablum and apologies?
Academic feminists' fears of alienating people do, however, have a certain basis. While in principal academics' audience includes the cohorts of nice people everywhere, in fact it mainly comprises professional colleagues. This audience is demonstrably unsympathetic. But academic feminists consistently maintain that the hostility results from faulty communication rather than incompatible interests. "Those men simply don't know all the facts or understand yet. Proceeding calmly and politely, feminism can reach them, enlighten them, and enlist their aid--provided some fanatic movement faction doesn't spook them with a hard line." Thus, in using their fanatic movement influence to push a soft line, academic feminists even have the power to tell the movement what its target population should be: male academics and their ilk.return to "Academic Feminists..."
(6) Assuming, of course, that she has a prosperous husband. The phenomenon of particularizing the general even affects the definition of what benefits academic women. So the needs of academic women with low-paid husbands, and of gay and single academics are ignored. Programs like half-time jobs and nepotism (another academic favorite) benefit only those academics who are heterosexual, married, and prosperous. Very conceivably they could harm everyone else.return to "Academic Feminists..."
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